Jeremy Corbyn should tell his followers to fight poverty, not Labour MPs

Jeremy Corbyn and his movement of members and supporters have won a mighty victory. Jeremy has made plain that the mass movement he has built up, Momentum – a remarkable achievement in and of itself – is about forging a new, transformational politics. Having triumphed in the Labour leadership election, how can Momentum now help Jeremy achieve the more difficult goal of changing Britain in favour of the very large, growing, and extremely vulnerable underbelly of the poor?

Jeremy, to his credit, hopped across the river from Liverpool to my Birkenhead constituency last Saturday immediately after trouncing Owen Smith. Once he arrived at the Neo Café, part of the Feeding Birkenhead project which I set up to prevent people being forced to go without food, everything he saw was heading for landfill or the incinerator before it was salvaged, yet everything was beautiful and positive – the food, the clothes, the furniture, and the plants in the garden. What lessons should he draw from Saturday’s visit, if his movement is to show the first signs of being able to bring about significant political and economic change?

Only 17 per cent of food "waste", the like of which Jeremy used to cook on Saturday, is saved for human consumption. Here is the need, if ever, for a national movement with which middle Britain who pay for the destruction of this food would be willing allies. To date, however, Momentum’s activities seem to have centred on a 100 per cent effort to take over constituency parties and deselect critical MPs. It has already given notice that two Merseyside MPs are for the chop.

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Feeding Birkenhead is part of a national network created by a cross-party group of MPs and peers which I chair. The aim of our national movement is to achieve three objectives. The first is obviously to feed the hungry now. Then, to help poorer people counter bureaucratic inefficiency and an unjust sanctions policy to gain a weekly income, beat mounting debts and acquire cooking and budgetary skills. The third aim, which should be central to Jeremy’s movement’s transforming role, is to use the information gained from working with our very poorest citizens to fashion long-term reforms that change their fortunes, and those of every other similarly placed vulnerable family.

This strategy is beginning to deliver significant gains, but has yet to engage Labour’s new members. So here is Jeremy’s first task. Is Momentum’s aim to burrow into constituency parties in order to refashion the Parliamentary Labour Party? Or is it about changing the face of Britain? If it is the latter, then Feeding Britain must form part of that structure, given the growing and wretched extent of hunger in the sixth richest country in the world.

There is some real old-fashioned campaigning to be done, but putting the shoulder to the wheel involves hard and consistent effort if the poor are not to be let down again. In every constituency, too many poor children take their hunger to bed and then onto school with them the next morning. So that school teachers aren’t paying for breakfasts from their own wage packets, Feeding Britain is supplying schools – thanks to the generosity of churches – with free breakfasts. The number of Birkenhead’s schools so covered has jumped threefold. But it takes people to deliver the food regularly if poor children are not again to be let down. Where is Momentum here?

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Significant numbers of children eligible for free school meals have not been signed up by their parents and, as a result, go hungry. Feeding Britain has promoted the use by local authorities of housing benefit data that selects and automatically registers poor children who are eligible without any fuss or stigma, while at the same time ensuring that their school gains their Pupil Premium funding. In Wirral, Feeding Britain’s campaign resulted in an extra £725,000 a year going to poor children’s schooling. Where is Momentum lobbying for other local authorities to follow suit?

Turning elsewhere, there are companies like delivery firm Hermes bullying low-paid workers into self-employment contracts about which my senior researcher Andrew Forsey and I compiled a report to the Prime Minister. The bosses are denying those workers all employment rights. Where is Momentum in campaigning on this issue? I have lobbied the Government to send in HMRC and they have since asked it to consider a full investigation. What about some newsworthy picketing of Hermes headquarters to turn the heat up on that board? No sign yet of Momentum.

But these campaigns, and many more, need to have wind behind them if they are to be successful. Is Jeremy up for the task of directing Momentum to become the transformational movement of which he talks? Or is the goal simply to fight over the composition of the Labour Party?